Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

Earlier in the year of 2018, True Achievements held a viral even where gamers get together to share online Viral achievements. Such examples normally include some form of playing with the developers of the game and then anyone who plays with those players that played with the developers also get the achievement passed on. Much like a virus.

Any way Banjo Kaoozie: Nuts and Bolts was one such game that carried a viral achievement for, incidentally, playing an Xbox Live multiplayer game against a Banjo team member, or somebody who has already. My friend hosted a session for this achievement and I used it to start the game, 3 months later, I was able to add it to my completed pile.

Nuts and Bolts is, to be mean, a collection of all the shitty bits of Lego and vehicle games all rolled into one. To top it off, it’s dressed up as a satirical piss take of Banjo Kazooie. This kind of humour is something I’ve never really found funny and it’s not whimsical to have the characters in the game communicate in stupid animalistic noises in the day and age where we have voice actors. It’s annoying and infuriating.

Anyway, the story goes that Banjo has got fat sitting on Spiral Mountain when the Lord of Games shows up for no reason to throw them into another adventure. After pretending it’s a platform adventure game for less than two minutes, you are then given a shitty cart and have to compete in various vehicle challenges for the next 50 or so hours. Again, I’m sure this was supposed to be funny but it’s not.

The gameplay itself is hurtful. You have to build your own vehicles to compete in the challenges and not only does anything you build handle like you’ve built it, but they also fall apart really easily, get stuck on scenery really easily and if you get airborne, fly through the air at a stupid rate of knots and you lose all control. Essentially any mistake you make, or if the game decides to fuck you over (which will happen a lot), normally means restarting the challenge. And I haven’t even started talking about Showdown Town yet.

Showdown Town in the hub world from which you can access all the other levels. Showdown Town is filled with NPCs that walk around the roads, continuously getting in your way and throwing dumbass one liners at you like it’s your fault when you hit them. 

In order to bank the Jigsaw pieces, you first need to earn them in the relevant level. This then causes them to appear in a level-specific globe in Showdown Town. Then, you then need to transport them from here to the big globe in the centre of town. Why???

Once you get to a certain stage of the game, police cars will start showing up in order to stop you banking the Jigsaw pieces you need to complete the story. This whole thing is unnecessary. All it does is drag out the process of completing the game for no reason at all other than to be deliberately annoying. At this point, you know the game is trolling you.

Achievements – 1,250 Points – 60 Achievements

I’ll confess, I gave up on trying to complete this game without help after the tutorial once I discovered what a cunt it was going to be. That said, I only really used it as a guide to find the best builds and take advantage of some of the in-game glitches that were available.

The first part of completing the game, involves going around Showdown Town collecting as many bits of vehicles as possible. This allows you to be able to build some decent vehicles from the start making the opening few levels a breeze. After a couple of hours of playing, it also dawned on me what a slog it was going to be. There are 131 total ‘jiggies’ to collect. In order to get them all you need to complete every challenge in the game to TT standard. There is a bar at the top which either increases or decreases as you do things and you need to get the maximum score. After a while it’s very repetitive and I could only play for an hour at a time before doing something else. Like punching myself in the eye.

Anyway, getting all the jiggies will get you a fair way through the achievement list. There are also other things you will need to do in Showdown Town, collecting all the notes being the big one. There are 900 of these but they are often in large groups. You also need to rehouse a Jinjo which involves pulling a switch and taking it to its house. After doing this, you need to arrest a Minjo by putting it in the prison you freed the Jinjo from. These words don’t make a lot of sense to me either.

The hardest part of the non-jiggy gathering is for completing Klungo’s arcade game. It’s a very straightforward rail-platformer where all you need to do is jump but the game is so fussy that you have to jump perfectly to clear some of the obstacles. It’s quick but frustrating, made even more frustrating by the fact that the game will randomly crash when you’re playing it. This is part of the game bizarrely. I’m not sure why anyone thought that would be a good idea.

There are several specific things you need to do in each of the game worlds for a few more achievements and another few for building some specific vehicles and getting them to do certain things. An example of this is getting a 200 block vehicle to travel over a certain speed.

The worst part of the whole list is a 0 point achievement called Stop N Swop. To get this achievement, you have to play Banjo Kazooie, an entirely different game, and unlock a Stop and Swop egg. Then go back to Nuts and Bolts and pick it up. So now I have another game to complete!

Multiplayer

As mentioned at the start, there is a multiplayer element and a viral achievement. In addition to this, you have to complete various multiplayer stuff including but not limited to, winning ranked matches and winning races by crossing the line backwards and by walking. The biggest one of these is completing a marathon multiplayer game which is made even longer if you download the DLC before doing it. Which I did.

Downloadable Content

What does the DLC entail? More of the same. There are another 12 jiggies and trophies to collect here and you have to get them all if you want all the achievements. To top it off, these challenges are majorly harder than the main game ones and they feel very cheap at times. For instance, one such challenge has you do a 180 spin if you touch anything, scenary or other racers and it’s nigh on impossible to catch up with the AI afterwards. If you do hit another racer, they seem to be completely unaffected too.

There are another two multiplayer achievements for the DLC. One can be knocked out if you did download the DLC before doing the marathon above as this will include all the DLC games. Win them all for one achievement. The other achievement is for winning a DLC game in a ranked match. This was frustrating as the matchmaking for two people often results in a random game being selected so it took several attempts to get this one.

After getting all the jiggys, Klungo has a new game that’s even harder than the first one. Thankfully this time there are no crashes though. That’s the only positive.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts felt more like hard work than fun at times but after seeing it through, I had a strange sense of accomplishment that almost made the whole thing feel worth it. I am definitely on the slide for these style games though and won’t be buying any more racing games… once I’ve completed all the ones I already own, that is!